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Total Jobs
About This Indicator
What Are Total Jobs?
The count of jobs on nonfarm payrolls, public and private, full-time and part-time. A person with two jobs counts twice; farm work and the self-employed are left out. First estimates are revised in later reports.
Why Do They Matter?
Payrolls are the headline of the monthly jobs report, drawn from employers' payroll records: in effect, a count of paychecks. The unemployment rate asks households instead, so the two can disagree for months.
Can Politics Influence Them?
Federal Reserve rates, stimulus, taxes, and regulation can change the pace of hiring, and immigration shapes how fast the workforce grows. Over a term, though, the count mostly follows the business cycle and working-age population growth.
Key Idea
A million new jobs was more than 2% of payrolls in 1950 and less than 1% by 1990, so a raw count flatters later decades simply because the workforce is larger.
Scored: Faster Growth Ranks Better
Source: BLS. CES0000000001.
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